kc3-lang/automake

2012-06-12T17:24:21

docs: recursive make considered harmful In the documentation, we shouldn't confuse "packages using subdirectories" with "packages using recursive make invocations". A package can have a careful organization in subdirectories, make no (or almost no) use of make recursion (examples of such packages are GNU bison, GNU cppi, and Automake itself). In fact, make recursion should be used as seldom as possible, because it makes the build system more brittle and dependency declarations less faithful. See Peter Miller's article "Recursive Make Considered Harmful" for more a more in-depth discussion: http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/books/rmch/ * doc/automake.texi (Directories): Clarify how a build system based on make recursion does. Observe that such a system, albeit being very widespread, has its own issues and drawbacks, and that one can have a non-recursive setup also for projects using complex directory layout. (Recursing subdirectories): Speak of "packages that use make recursion" rather than of "packages with subdirectories". Signed-off-by: Stefano Lattarini <stefano.lattarini@gmail.com>